The University of California Libraries have completed a strategic planning effort to guide the development of shared print collections and services in the upcoming years.

The environment for print collections has evolved considerably since the inception of the UC shared print program eight years ago. Shared print encompasses a widening array of collaborative activities and partnerships, policies, toolkits, collection management models and approaches. These efforts have made significant progress toward UC’s vision of a 21st Century Library Collection that is “integrated, shareable and user-centric.”

Several key areas for collaboration at various stages of exploration or implementation that have motivated this planning effort include:

As part of UC’s strategic planning for shared print, the Council of University Librarians has endorsed a multi-year plan with the following general goals for shared print:

To facilitate the development of more comprehensive and diverse research collections available to UC library users throughout the system through efficient collaborative methods for the prospective acquisition of research resources.

To accelerate the development of shared collections to provide substantial opportunities for campuses to avoid costs or to reallocate RLF and campus library space for other uses.

To integrate UC Shared Print collections with broader regional, national and international shared collections.

To preserve the scholarly printed record, where print remains the archival medium of choice, at the lowest possible unit cost.

To ensure UC library users can readily discover and access shared print collections held within UC or by other libraries.

To develop and maintain a significant print collection of record to support the UC mission of teaching, research and patient care.

To provide robust, efficient access to UC users to the formats (print and electronic) that best support research and teaching.

To create an ecosystem of monograph collections and cooperative partnerships within which users can readily access shared, retained print monographs, and library staff can make local collection management decisions in a UC systemwide, regional or network-level context.

The scope of collaboration for future projects includes:

Collaboration among UC Libraries (consortium).

Collaboration within the State of California and Western Region of the United States (state and regional).

Collaboration among networks of libraries and consortia (network-level), such as the HathiTrust Distributed Print Monographs Archive and other regional shared print programs.

Two teams, a Shared Print Strategy and Shared Print Operations Team, have been formed within the UC Libraries advisory structure to advance UC Libraries goals. They will pursue two strategies and define success indicators to ensure an appropriate scale and scope of effort:

A phased approach to space reclamation through print collaboration, with a focus on journals, monographs and federal documents.

Annual print serials archiving campaigns to the Regional Library Facilities including title lists from WEST, JSTOR, IEEE, Federal Documents and others, as identified. The UC Libraries recently ran a very successful journal de-duplication pilot project at one of its facilities and that service may be expanded to attend to other candidate title lists.

Develop a shared print in place monographs program including collection analysis, research into user behaviors and demand for print and digital books throughout the research lifecycle, and experimentation with access and business models for shared (retained) monographs.